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MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) – The advantages of owning a smartphone are far and wide but do smartphones cause stress?

If alerts are not turned off, smartphones can constantly prompt their owners.

The technology travels with us everywhere we go, intrudes into our awareness and is routinely interrupting our concentration or our ability to focus.

If this sounds familiar, here are some tips to be smart about your smartphone use.

“The first thing is to tune into how you’re using your smartphone. Is it dictating your life or are you actually creating rules on how you’re going to use it?” Psychologist Scott Bea said. “Maybe you’re willing to check your phone once every hour or once every half hour, rather than every time you hear an alert.”

Practicing mindfulness and being truly aware of your surroundings may help according to Bea.

“One of the things that reduce stress in people is a sense of controllability. And so, as we relinquish our smartphones a little bit or create better decision rules, we get back a sense that we’re actually in governance of our life and in governance of where our attention is going,” he said.

That means deciding when you are going to bother with your phone versus when it is going to bother you.

Here’s something surprising. A study found that the use of smartphones did not result in a rise in stress levels when used for professional purposes. Instead, the added stress was found in social settings.

So how bad can smartphone stress get?

Some users actually begin to feel phantom vibrations, thinking their phone is buzzing when it isn’t.